The Plainville High School Digital Devils FIRST Robotics Team competed at Wilby High School in Waterbury this past weekend. This year’s challenge is called "Power Up". The team has only six weeks to design, engineer, build and test a robot for the competitions. The competition game, includes two alliances of video game characters and their human operators who are trapped in an arcade game. Both team alliances are working to defeat the boss in order to escape the game.
Each match begins with a 15-second Autonomous period in which Robots operate only on preprogrammed instructions. During the remaining 2 minutes and 15 seconds of the match, the Tele-operated period, student drivers control the Robots. Teams on an Alliance work together to continue to control their Switch and the Scale. They can also trade in their Power Cubes for Power Ups. During the final 30 seconds, teams work together to Climb to Face the Boss. Team Alliances are seeded in the Qualification tournament using ranking points which are awarded based on a combination of their Win-Loss-Tie record.
The Digital Devils were picked by 2 other teams to compete in the playoff matches. During the playoffs the team faced tough competition and battled through to the semi-final matches. Although faced with mechanical break downs and programming difficulties, the Digital Devils pulled away with a Championship Victory.
The Digital Devils’ next competition is scheduled for April 6-8 at Hartford Public High School. All events are open to the public.